


Rubber Souls

by virgotrocious



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Exile arch, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), kind of non-linear narrative but not really, me waxing poetic about a 16 year old playing minecraft, tommy come in here and get yall's blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28045227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgotrocious/pseuds/virgotrocious
Summary: Tommy remembers how his shoes stuck slightly when he had dared to tease a step over the edge, and wonders if that resistance was enough to keep him from leaping. When Dream had pulled him away from the endless fall a moment later, all Tommy felt was resentment.[It's hard to fight, harder to fight alone.]
Relationships: Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), No Romantic Relationship(s), Ranboo & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Comments: 4
Kudos: 99





	Rubber Souls

  
  


The Nether burns ad infinitum and the heat of it hits Tommy in the face like the radiation off an explosive; the sensation is unsettlingly familiar. 

He’d been spending far too much time there in recent days, excusing the constant trips as an escape from the harsher cold of the overworld—grassy plains of exile having grown brown and stiff as the year turns bleak. He hadn’t much cared for the Nether before his banishment, too hot and too dangerous, but now he knows the landscape surrounding the hub as if it were seared into the back of his eyes. Tommy wears it like a brand. 

It was easier that way, explaining away his presence as something incidental— correlation without causation and blackstone that burned hot like coals beneath his feet. Sometimes, if Tommy stood one place too long, the rubber soles of his worn sneakers would begin to melt against the path and make a pulling sound as they stuck with each step. He was only ever so still once. 

Tommy remembers his first trip to the Nether after his exile as if it had only just happened; playing over and over like a film reel caught in the momentum of spinning downhill. Dream, Sapnap, Ghostbur—they had gone through the portal to admire the tree erected in his absence, a celebration that was in no way  _ about  _ Tommy’s exile but stung all the same. He had stood waiting for their return, staring down at the bubbling ocean of molten lava beneath him. 

Tommy remembers how his shoes stuck slightly when he had dared to tease a step over the edge, and wonders if that resistance was enough to keep him from leaping. When Dream had pulled him away from the endless fall a moment later, all Tommy felt was resentment. 

——————— 

Tommy had only just finished crafting his newest set of iron armor, satisfied with the form of it despite the odd dent or chink grown of inexperience. His hands ached, one finger cut on the sharp edge of raw metal, but his chest had settled into the mechanical motion of crafting and he felt better for it. No sooner than leaving the walls of Logstedshire did that mood sour.

Inexplicably, Dream seemed to have materialized from nothing in front of the pathetic tent Tommy called home; the expression he wore was friendly enough, and that alone put Tommy on edge. Dream, smile unchanging, dug a deep hole just meters in front of the tent and pointed down. 

“Your armor,” he said. “Take it off.”

Tommy blanched, waiting to talk until his throat stopped compressing and the words were safe to come out smoothly. 

“Dream please, I only just made it.” 

The man seemed unfazed, gesturing to the hole once more. When Tommy didn’t make an immediate move to comply, Dream sighed a kind of breath that didn’t actually sound sad at all and pulled a black sword from an equally impressive sheath. It glistened with an enchanted glow that reflected sunlight all too well, and the sight of it made Tommy ill. 

Suddenly, he was itching to be in the Nether where his shoes stuck and the heat made him lightheaded. Where a deep breath could fill his lungs with ash and the dry hacking of it meant he could still feel anything at all. Where the all-consuming heat chipped away at the wax between his wings and gave him hope that one day he may fall. 

Tommy dropped his armor into the pit. 

When Dream chased it with a healthy amount of TNT, he didn’t step back. The burning heat off the explosive made him feel at home.

——————— 

When Tommy was in the Nether, he was there alone. At least then it was by choice. 

A majority of the server had long gathered the Netherite and blaze rods they needed to survive, and if not spare pairs existed in forgotten chests scavenged by those who happened upon them. It seemed, aside from travel—a means to an end—the landscape had been… abandoned. Cast aside. 

Tommy looked at the unchanged hub and lifted his foot a bit. It wasn't sticking yet. 

The only person that ever seemed to come by was Ranboo, through the Greater SMP portal and traveling to nowhere in particular, most often stopping to linger with Tommy when the two happened to meet. It was staged as mere coincidence and nothing more, but there was this disgusting,  _ clawing  _ thing inside of Tommy that so very desperately needed that to be untrue. 

The two crossed paths that day in the central hub just east of the portal. 

Tommy was sitting on the path by then, legs dangling over the side. It had been more comfortable with armor on, but the heat eating through the fabric of his pants was so consistent, it had grown to be part of him. Ranboo approached with an air of casualty that felt forced. He didn’t take a seat.

“Hello,” the man said with an awkward wave, leaning forward a bit to try and catch Tommy’s eye. It didn’t work for a long moment, and he tried again. “Tommy! How’s it going?”

The boy jerked, neither closer to nor further from the lava but startled all the same. He looked up to catch a glance of who was talking, feeling sick when he realized the one he had expected was Dream. Resentment and relief came together like ammonia and bleach.

“...Fine, I guess.” 

Ranboo looked a little surprised; Tommy didn’t often ignore the opportunity to complain.

“Really? Things are going a bit better then?”

Tommy’s feet were warm for the first time in days, the danger of frostbite ever looming in the winter weather just outside. He rested a hand on the blackstone path for a split second before snatching it away to cradle against his chest. The surface was hotter than he’d expected—no fabric to dull the bite. 

Seeing this, Ranboo pulled off his backpack so quickly it was as if that too had burned him, hastily retrieving a pair of gloves from the front pocket. 

“Here,” he offered them to Tommy brightly. “I was going to bring these by your house anyway.” 

_ Your House.  _

Tommy accepted the gloves wordlessly, but made no move to put them on. Ranboo shifted from foot to foot for an uncomfortable moment. 

“You know… I’m always here if you need to talk.” 

Tommy nodded alongside a sigh that ran deeper than bone. 

“Thanks man.” 

Ranboo left the Nether a minute later, fleeing from his own discomfort.  _ Liar.  _

The sting of disappointment was bitter on Tommy’s tongue. In a sudden moment of anger, he hurled the gloves over the blackstone ledge, unsatisfied with how far they flew and jealous of how far they fell. 

———————

“Nobody came to my party, Dream.”

There was sand in Tommy’s shoes, grains seeping in from a hole that had been worn into the canvas nearest his big toe. The day was bright and uncharacteristically warm for the lateness of the season—more than likely the last nice day of the year.

“Nobody came. Except for you.”

Dream was still wearing his armor, unbefitting of a beach day. The mask settled across his face was unchanged in expression, a haunting constant through the treachery of banishment. Tommy wanted to smash the cracked ceramic of it beneath his heel, stomp until shards of white embedded themselves into the soles of his shoes and turned his feet red. Dream put a hand upon Tommy’s shoulder and he melted into the touch as warmth like honey pooled into the curvature of his collarbone. 

“I’m sorry, Tommy. I guess they just don’t care.”

The weight with which Dream speaks makes his touch too real, and Tommy tears away from it as he had with Ranboo’s pity. It makes him feel like an injured animal, gnashing its teeth any which way if only to delay the inevitable. 

_ ‘It’s not your time to die,’  _ Dream had said. No… it’s not your time to die  _ ‘yet.’ _

  
  


———————

Funnily enough, Tommy wasn’t alone when it ended; even if he thought that was the case. Dream wasn’t nearby, no one else had visited him in weeks, and Tommy was standing at the blackstone path with the weighted comfort of finality in his chest. Everything he owned—not much at all—was left at his tent.

Everything except the compass and two italicized words:  _ Your Tubbo.  _

The fall wasn’t the endless flight Tommy had conjured in his head with each look over the edge. It didn’t feel like moving at all. It was more like a moment of suspended time, the briefest second between cold and warmth held in the air like raindrops caught in the spider’s web. Tommy was on the path. Then he was nowhere. And finally, he was gone. 

Back colliding with an unfathomable heat, one so searing it felt as if ice were seeping into his skin, the last thing Tommy saw was an open mouth screaming his name in horror and the disheveled panic of a president who did what’s right for his nation. 

_ Your Tommy. _

**Author's Note:**

> i loved writing this and then watching Tommy's streams and it's just him screaming about his log girlfriend. they gave us an inch with this arch and we took the whole damn mile.


End file.
